Films of books you’ve read are generally painful experiences, even when done well. Cloud Atlas though is taken from a book I have actually read but have no strong feelings about one way or another and it’s nice to be a dispassionate observer. It’s like watching Michael Gove play Russian Roulette – you hope for the best, of course you do, but if it all goes horribly wrong it won’t pain you. In fact this film version of David Mitchell’s sprawling multi narrative centuries-straddling opus is not only bolder, braver and more thrillingly creative than almost all the piffle on the Oscar lists, but more entertaining too.

The film takes on six separate but discreetly interconnected stories: a Pacific voyage in the 19th century, a young libertine composer in the 1930s, an investigative reporter trying to expose a corrupt nuclear power plant in early seventies San Francisco, a publisher trying to stay afloat in present day London, a revolt against cloning in 22nd century Neo Seoul and savages in a distant post cataclysmic future. (The Wachawskis and Twyker split the directing chores, three stories each.)

The book has a unique structure: the first half of each story told in chronological order moving from the sea journey through to a midpoint which is the whole of the barbaric post-civilisation tale. (In the book this Riddley Walker pastiche was the hardest part to get through and in the film it is the favoured toilet break point.) Then the book works its way back down through the ages with the concluding half of each story.

The film though presents them in a freewheeling, fast-moving mosaic that crisscrosses between them and rarely spends more than five minutes in one place. The cast appear in multiple roles scattered across the stories, switching, nationality, ethnicity and sex. It’s gimmicky and not always successful – the ability to turn Caucasian actors into Orientals hasn’t advanced much since Sean Connery did it in You Only Live Twice, while Berry whited up looks like Madonna – but it gives the film a pantomime levity that works in its favour.

The poster says Everything Is Connected, which sums up the ways the novel’s been simplified to emphasize the theme of reincarnation and history repeating itself. It is a virtue though. In the book the links made between the characters and stories seemed to be inadequate reward for the effort of wading through 500 pages of Mitchell’s various acts of literary ventriloquism. The film offers a frantic, furious skim read that gives them exactly the weight they deserve. It is an endearing mix of substance and silliness.